Well, that accounts for 1.5 million of them

Regarding total TV audiences for this week:

- 9pm Monday = 22.3m
- 9pm Tuesday = 20.8m

Not a huge difference.

Strictly premiered to 7.8m *8.1m peak last year so its no wonder the BBC are annoyed at ITV for puting XF there. It could could it down below 7m.

Its competition last year was Piers Morgan Life Stories with 2.4m. TXF will be at least 4m higher. Could bee horrible rating's for both.

Suggestions that Itv2 won't miss TOWIE are way off the mark. TOWIE airs 33 hours per year at a consolidated average of about 1.5million viewers. That is a huge number of hours doing those kind of numbers. Plebs and Tricked may have done quite well But both will consolidate under 1.2m and likely to rate lower for subsequent episodes. Not only that but both shows only air between 4 to 8 hours for the entire year. Itv2 are losing 33hours of 1.5m consolidated ratings, that will be a big loss for them!

Good to see BBC1 winning the 9pm slot last night by almost 3 to 1 with their niche looking drama. This is the kind of drama which the BBC make for quality purposes, not ratings.

I suspect they have already calculated that TOWIE has most likely peaked. I would agree with that assessment. It can do more of a job for the new channel than it would for ITV2. The repositioning of ITV2 might not work overnight, but long term the channel has a lot more potential than it did. TOWIE and the like were definitely dragging it down and putting viewers off the higher quality commissions.

It may not seem like it but TOS actually takes a break in the summer and they have ''highlights'' programmes (which amazingly last for 30 minutes).

All of which is countered by the fact it has around 20% at best of the base audience that the other soaps have. So it has to get around 5 x as many votes just to keep pace.

I am way out of the core viewing age of the show and my mum watches it too at 88!

We watch all the soaps and though mum thinks Emmerdale is tops she agrees that Hollyoaks is far more interesting than both Corrie and EastEnders these days.

A couple of years ago it was dire and leaking viewers and on the verge of cancellation (check back this thread for comments) but it has given the audience what it wants and turned itself around impressively.

The much-maligned One Show had a full-slot rating of 3.7m/20%. Even after tape-checking, it will have beaten everything on ITV after 20:00 and run Holby fairly close.

Tricked was up from the 737k (3.5%) it premiered last year to 860k (4.1%). That's a pretty impressive result when it apparently not a hit.

I said exactly that on here last week but it did not go down well! But as you have spotted, like I did, it would be a good way to keep some of the same cast (there is quite a genuine overlap) with a story that has plenty of meat to take it well beyond the 60s that could be paced to run for a few series.

It is curious that British TV has not done a Beatles series yet as it is a part of everyone's history. But I suspect the success of Cilla will focus someone's mind on the idea.

Perhaps there are rights issues that are the real problem?

As for what Samuel asked I also have posted a couple of times that the show only really covers the early career of Cilla leaving scope for more IF anyone involved - ie cast/writer - wanted to do it (ITV probably would given the ratings).

Though they might have had to tweak episode 3 if it has a 'what happened next' type coda added. Which it might/might not do.

Last night's 700k for EastEnders on BBC3 is massive! They couldn't even achieve that during the Lucy Beale aftermath week.

Overall puts last night's combined figure up to a more respectable 5.44m vs Emmerdale's combined figure of 5.9m. Not too bad for either soap in the end.

ITV announces a third series of Endeavour:

http://www.itv.com/presscentre/press...mammoth-screen

No surprise there really. Interesting little stat in the press release about the final episode of the last series being ITV's best performing drama amongst ABC1 Men this year.

To be honest, the ITV1 screening at 10.40 on Friday is hardly a bad slot on the face of things. BBC1 show plenty of comedy at 10.35 and it does perfectly well. It hardly seems much of a massive demotion, just an hour later than the last series. Unfortunately for them it's hardly likely to do much in that slot as ITV generally doesn't show any new content at 10.35 so people don't look for it, they haven't promoted the ITV1 screening and it's opposite Graham Norton.


And of course half the categories at the Soap Awards aren't voted for by the public but by a panel of judges.

But every cloud has a silver lining - TOS isn't being shown in Scotland until ten past midnight

Cilla is the story of a working-class girl made good. The story goes up to the start of her TV career in 1968.

Thereafter Cilla's life consists of having a successful TV career, raising a family and having another successful TV career. Not sure there's much there for a sequel.

The biggest "dramas" in Cilla's life after 1968 were the death of her daughter at just a couple of hours old in 1975 and the death from cancer of her husband Bobby in 1999, neither of which, I would think, Cilla would want dramatized for television, and especially not just for the benefit of ITV's ratings.

I agree that it would be a mistake to try to create drama where none existed.

Cilla has said somewhere that she found it very hard to watch this drama. So dramatising later episodes like these would be very unfair on her indeed.

So the Beatles it is then?

539k and 561k for the last two clashes so a rise of around 150k probably due to the big week themes they are running at the minute. Had Emmerdale not been an hour the BBC1 showing may have risen from Monday with Bens return.


Great news!

Woman magazine has a piece about Carole McGiffin and her views on the new Loose Women.

She pulls no punches.

She says the show should be renamed 'Cosy chats around a lilliputian table with the audience on your lap'.

This was indeed the most immediately obvious change to the set after the revamp. Like going from a studio into a cupboard.

As for the ratings - um - she adds: 'Good luck to them. They'll need it...the ratings are s**t.'

Samuel will be proud of her.

Not sure under 6m for a so called big episode is all that good. They have damaged themselves with the clash as well.

Pleased with this - it is one drama I really got into.

Pleased with this news. I do enjoy watching Endeavour.

The problem is that EastEnders on BBC1 now can't achieve the ratings it did during Lucy Beale aftermath week. They're not close to 7m in overnights and some episodes don't reach 7m in consolidated ratings.

I see nothing particularly good about EastEnders ratings now. Scheduling killed its momentum along with not continuing the Lucy storyline enough in some weeks. We will probably look back on it and say they started it too early.

Also we have some big episodes this week and ratings have hardly budged. Good episodes, crap ratings. Disappointing.

I suggested Dusty Springfield. Read her Wikipedia page or see the BBC4 documentary about her. Her life was a real-life soap opera.

Hugely respected as a singer, greatly admired in America as a white soul singer. An up and down career. Alcohol abuse, drug abuse, self-harm. A secret lesbian who worried that if that was revealed it would destroy her career. Career revival courtesy of the Pet Shop Boys in the late 80s and her long, and sadly ultimately unsuccessful, fight against breast cancer in the 90s.

There's also a link with Cilla. Wikipedia says, "In 1993, she recorded a duet with her former 1960s professional rival and friend, Cilla Black".

They did start it too early.